This past week I attended the memorial mass of one of the most saintly people I have ever met -- Gen Campbell. For all of my juvenile life we lived next door to the Campbells. My family lived on the corner of Harrie and Phelps and barely a car width west of us was the Campbell abode. When I moved away from Newberry and talk of family came up I used to say I was from a medium sized family. And then when I got to telling that I am the oldest of six, I was always interrupted by someone commenting that they thought six children was a big family. (Now that I have three of my own I agree, three is a big family -- six is humungous!) The reason I didn’t think much of our six is that the Campbell clan numbered somewhere in the teens when it came to counting children. I used to know the exact number of kids, but now every time I do a count I come up with a different number. I am certain enough, though, to say there were more than twelve and less (I think) than twenty.
At one time on our block there were over thirty kids.
Every backyard was community property and every sand box fair game. As I remember, no one really had any gardens or flowers as they were too busy watering and weeding kids. My parents always believed their job was to grow kids and not a lawn, so our backyard had permanent base paths and goalie boxes etched into what was left of a yard. Only the lilac bush seemed to survive the daily onslaught of boys being boys and girls being girls
and parents too worn out to try their hands at tomatoes or carrots or roses. But I digress . . .
Mrs. Campbell always had more than enough to do to keep her family on track. Her oldest child is the same age as my Dad and her youngest the same age as my next-to-youngest bother. Quite a span!
Mr. Campbell died when I was about ten, after years of ill health and while Gen missed him a lot she made it her mission to see that her children never wanted for her attention or praise - or discipline.
Like a moth to the flame, her house always seemed to attract kids. As if her house wasn’t full enough,
many of us made it part of our school route to pass through the Campbell house just about breakfast time. And everyone who walked through was fed.
I would wager that on many mornings they toasted two complete loaves of bread. Some summer afternoons when we were there at snack time and the bushel of apples was gone, we all lined up
with tablespoons in our hands. One by one, we would march by the gallon peanut butter pail and stick in our spoons. It was a nutritious snack that
not only fed the whole neighborhood, but kept us quiet while we tried to get the peanut butter off the roof of our mouths and the spoons out from between our lips.
I remember stumbling out of bed in the mornings in time to see Mrs. Campbell toddling back from morning mass. She was a teacher, mother, disciplinarian, philosopher, and, as I said before, a saint. I have spent much of my life in schools of one sort or another trying to figure things out. I am supposedly trained as an anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist, public speaker, and as a pastor. I’m just a smidge away from a doctorate that I might actually finish before I die. But if someone asked me to name the most influential people in my life, none of them would be theologians. They are all people who showed, not told, me what it meant to be a human being, a Christian, a parent, and a
neighbor. And right at the top of the list would be Gen.
I remember much about her--her work for Community Action, the sting of her paddle, the love she had for the Lord. But the picture that will last in my mind far beyond today is that of a servant. Once when there was a death in my family, the first one at our door was Gen Campbell. She came dressed not for a church-type visit, but to work. She said, “I can’t afford flowers and I didn’t know what food to prepare, but I want to give you what I can.” And that woman of God , mother of many, and surrogate to many more, came into the house, while we were at the funeral and brush-scrubbed our hard wood floors on her hands and knees. Her own house probably needed it much more. Her knees didn’t make it
easy to just bend over, much less to clean the wood. But she scrubbed until the floor shone.
In that instance cleanliness was not next to godliness; her attention to the cleanliness of our floors WAS godliness. She didn’t as much scrub the dirt out, as she scrubbed love in. As a minister all these years later I can’t help but believe that what I am called to do is serve others. I see it in the life of Jesus. And I experienced it in the lives of people like Gen Campbell. When I talked with her son Mark, who is my age, he said, “If my mother isn’t in heaven then there isn’t one.” I agree. And I would add, “It couldn’t be heaven for me if Genevieve Campbell wasn’t there.”
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says,“In my Father’s house are many rooms and I am going there to prepare a place for you.” I believe Gen is finding her room to be just fine. I also believe she signed up to help Christ prepare rooms for the rest of us. I suspect mine will have a floor that is squeaky clean and polished with love!
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